Aloha! Today I’m writing about why I dislike the latest sample I began working on which is simply entitled ‘Minimalist Whitacre Sampling’. Some of you may have guessed why I dislike it already…

A friend of mine, Gavin Higgins, showed me this Eric Whitacre piece, Sleep, back in July and it’s fair to say I was quite taken by it. After a year of consciously pushing my boundaries as a listener I think I quite enjoyed sitting back and listening to something that did all the work for me! (no offence, Whitacre…) For those of you who haven’t heard the piece, I listed it this week in my Spotify top ten (see ‘Steal our ears’ under discussions).

I started out by writing a polymetric drum sequence that I wanted to use as a texture for an improvisation. I planned to use several interchangeable textures as the backdrop for a solo ‘rant’ with violin. The density of the drum layers was making it quite difficult to differentiate between different ‘rhythmic islands’ and, as things went, the whole exercise began to feel slightly pointless as the structure could be easily ignored…all the listener would hear would be drums + violin = mess. Easy option was to find a tonal anchor point and, having this Eric Whitacre piece stuck in my mind, I thought a referential sample from the piece might help make it easier to navigate my improvisatory mess!

Cutting a long story short…I tired of the subtle sampling and filled the whole drum sampler with flashes from the Whitacre piece. I was completely aware of what this was going to sound like, it was starting me in the face the whole time but for some reason I couldn’t help myself….and for some unknown reason….I pretended to be Steve Reich for a second.

I have a love/hate relationship with minimalist music. I love repetition, the reference to movement and the consideration for a listener to get involved in the musical event taking place. It can be so easy to spend a lot of time on a musical moment, tailoring every nuance until you’re completely satisfied…only to realise in performance that the moment passes instantaneously and that no one got it. That’s a bit crap. But there’s compensating for something within context and then there’s patronizing.

“Did you hear that last bit?”

“Yeah I think I got it…the harmony, very nice”

“Well did you notice all my lovely added 6ths etc? I’ll play it just one more time so you can hear”
“Well that’s very thoughtful of you. Yeah I definitely heard it that time”

“Are you sure? Listen for the 6ths…”

“Yeah I got it, there it was again *hums notes*”

“No you’re a little flat there…I’ll just repeat it until you get it…”

*Explosive sound*

A composer lies dead on the floor.

I’m not saying I want to kill minimalist composers or anything…I’m just saying I don’t appreciate listening to a piece where the harmony digs its heels so far into the ground that its like arguing with a thick spide.

So I’ve inadvertently hit on the exact reason why I dislike this sample. Although the harmony presents new tones quite regularly, all of the pitches become part of the same harmonic identity because of the nature of the timbre and rhythm. I think it might be nice to treat the sample as though it were a chord in itself and pitch shift specific sections…and treat it like a juxtaposed ‘bar-chord’.

Hmmmm…..I’ll have to try this….will report back later.

(Steve Reich – After the war…good tune)

Check out the interview with Ruaidhri from TSE in month’s issue of Hotpress!!

Out in Irish newsagents now and available for postal delivery from the Hotpress Website!

Cav@TSE

Click below for Chris’s Playlist!

http://open.spotify.com/user/blurred_edge/playlist/0bf3RffIHuRFvYZf5y4mz9

The Cinematic Orchestra - Time & Space (Live At The Royal Albert Hall)
Hexstatic - Newton’s Cradle
UNKLE (with Alice Temple) – Bloodstain
The Cinematic Orchestra – Dawn
Bonobo - Nightlite (Zero dB Reconstruction)
Coldcut - Sound Mirrors
Amon Tobin - Bloodstone
Amon Tobin - Nightlife
Funki Porcini - Purrfect
Jurassic 5 - Sum Of Us

Click below for John’s Playlist!

http://open.spotify.com/user/megajohn/playlist/2bNjFvNDboGkNZsG1ZVapB

Seu Jorge - Life on Mars
Davey Graham -  Blues for Gino
She & Him - You really got a hold of me
Elliott Smith - Somebody that I use to know
Feist - So Sorry
Howlin’ Wolf -  Smokestack Lightning
Esbjorn Svensson Trio -  Tuesday Wonderland
Mice Parade - Warm Hard in Farmland
mum - They made frogs smoke ’til they exploded
Nick Drake - River Man

Click below for Ruaidhri’s Playlist!

http://open.spotify.com/user/ruaidhri.mannion/playlist/6wXyc6t3h5D6ggAPNUO3li

The Jesus Lizard - Then Comes Dudley
Julian Anderson - Book of Hours
Mice Parade-  Steady as she goes
Mice Parade - The Boat Room
Eric Whitacre - Sleep
John Fahey - Song for Missippi John Hurt
Kaija Saariaho - Nymphéa (for String Quartet and Live Electronics)
Ef - Hello Scotland
Simon Holt - Shadow Realm

Click below for Cav’s Playlist!

http://open.spotify.com/user/cav/playlist/1v1Le8oMAhv7XQAPOKXJ3u

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Come to Daddy
Ryoji Ikeda - Headphonics 0/1
Opeth - Deliverance
Elbow - The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver
Isis - Not In Rivers,But In Drops
Fingathing - You Fly Me
Amen - Coma America
Meshuggah - Straws Pulled at Random
Sigur Rós - [Popplagið]
Cornelius - Magoo Opening

So we are currently in the midst of tying up the last bits of the line-up of collaborators for The Summer Experiment 2009. Much like the music in The Summer Experiment, everything else is done ‘as-and-when’ during the short summer time frame. This method of working keeps things as exciting as possible, we could have easily ended up with no collaborators a week before the live performances….

As with everything in The Summer Experiment, it has the potential to fail in a big way!

Luckily this year we have the pleasure of performing alongside various other artists, musicians, poets and more from the cutting edge of the Belfast arts scene. Just ‘officially’ announced today are Signals Under Tests a Belfast based guitar and live electronics duet. I’m really looking forward to hearing their new material at the performances!

Outside our habits of roping in poor unsuspecting artists to collaborate with us, several new audio experiments have been posted on the websites. These have taken the form of clips and cuts from improvised experiments and composed ‘demo’ material. Most of the posted audio is taken from collaborative experiments, usually taking the form of 2 members discussing an idea or playing with some sounds, recording the result and posting it online. There is no extensive process behind the clips, they are not rehearsed in a studio for weeks or delicately composed with a pencil and manuscript paper. But they are mediated nuggets of sonic fury unleashed from our sound making devices with the final performances always in mind. Keep listening and you will hear bits of older audio re-appearing in a new form, tied into composed material or re-applied for group improvisation at the live experiments….

More coming soon!

Cav@TSE

Through the help of my own personal technical support and reality administor – Ruaidhri Mannion, i have now equipped my computer with various “useful” programs. As well as this, the corner of my room which holds the aforementioned mysterious internet-housing machine now has some company, with a multi-track recorder and the PODXT Live (heavenly creature that it is). This beautiful little corner of my room has now become known as “Skynet”, as i’m fairly confident it will try and terminate me in the near future.

As the least technically minded of the TSE bunch, i’m finding it all pretty exciting… Who knows next i might even discover what “lol” means! These life changes that i’ve made (melodramatic i know) are all to make sending material back and forth easier… and it also means i dont have to run down and annoy Cav anytime i want to record 2 notes with a bit of delay on them (i’m a simple man with simple pleasures!)

So apart from me finally caving in and joining the 21st century there is also the awesome news of TSE’s interview with Edwin McFee in Hotpress Magazine. I, of course, advise everyone to go and buy a copy as the article is great and as an added bonus there is a lovely wee picture of myself, Cav and Ruaidhri looking very moody and so cool you’d be forgiven if you got frostbite from standing too close (some results may differ.) It’s unfortunate that we don’t have a photo of the four of us yet… especially because Chris adds that more sophitcated level of devilish handsomeness that we previously lacked, but this will soon be rectified.

Right well i’ve probably said enough… my brain is having trouble funtioning now so either skynet has begun it’s attack or i should go to bed.

John@TSE

The summer has been hectic. Stupidly busy. It seems like a moment ago I was saying “I can’t believe we’re one month into this project”….when in fact another 2 weeks have past since then and now I’m saying scary things like….

“It’s only another 2 weeks until the Experiment ends.”

Two weeks ago the collective met together in the same room for the first time in Belfast. We have been exchanging words and sounds since the beginning of July, preparing to lock ourselves away in a dark room and write everything we possibly could. Short-term and high-speed is what TSE is all about, whatever your platform. I think that’s what I enjoy about this project the most.

As a collective, we write a different style of music to what I’ve been writing on my own and so it requires a different writing process. It’s taken me long enough this year to find my ‘sea-legs’ with regards to my own process and I know that it will continue to shift and refocus continually throughout my career. I tend to build the larger musical narrative upon some loose form of a psycho-theatrical or psycho-visual process (whether it’s driven by an emotive narrative or by shapes/textures) so I can establish the map of the piece. Raw materials usually precede the larger form, and I usually find myself beginning with harmony/timbre. And so a constant exchange of development of material influencing structure and vice-versa continues to fill out the work…too many details are a little arduous to read! But when I approach writing with a group of musicians like the other members of the TSE collective my approach changes dramatically.

As anyone working within any group will tell you, knowing each others strengths and weaknesses is the most important aspect. There’s a brutal honesty that goes unspoken and yet accepted as a group of musicians open up the floor to debate and know who to trust on various musical issues. I find that really exciting…knowing that where you fall down another can pick you up. The project becomes a learning curve for each of us as we fly the flag for our individual passions…whether it be harmony, timbre, electronics, rhythm or structure…and then of course there’s the inevitable arguing Brilliant.

We’re separated again until the final stages of the Experiment at the end of this month. In a lot of ways it quite suits me, I can take away the raw materials we’ve created together and structure them on my own and approach the others with a new framework. Rhythms which were created at speed in Belfast during the initial meetings can now be reconsidered in terms of their timbre and polished in preparation of performance…exciting times. Keep your eyes on the website for regular updates of audio material to hear the various treatments of the same material.

I could ramble all day….and arguably I already have. If you’re interested in my own work please take the time to visit my website.

Ruaidhri@TSE

Well as anyone who read the last few blogs will know TSE meet up in Belfast for our first group session (practising not, as some people may think, a trip to the local psychiatric clinic).

Coming away from this session we were all quite excited, what with things starting to click, tunes beginning to form and all sorts of other exciting and new feelings (accomplishment, etc). I regretfully feel i need to inform everyone now of my crippling writers block!!

I have been to a specialist and will be starting physiotherapy to hopefully “kick-start” my brain. There is also a search warrant out on my muse so if anyone spots her or knows any good music she may be hiding in please contact me as soon as possible!

Anyway, enough of me rambling. Unfortunately i’m probably not going to be great at relaying cohesive thoughts on this thing but sure we’ll see where we land.

So, yes, what i was going to mention was the ukulele flyer handout session. I seemed to delight, offend and mainly startle people, which is generally peoples reaction to me anyway so no change there.

I wish i had made more flyers as just when i had finished and was walking home with my ukulele in tow i past many people who quite clearly would have loved a little piece of paper about experiments during the summer… but alas they had to do with my rendition of “Somewhere over the Schism” – a beautiful amalgamation of TOOL’s “Schism” and The Wizard of Oz’s “Somewhere over the rainbow” and is currently the only thing i can “play” on the ukulele!

But hopefully soon i’ll be out on the streets with other classics like “Raindrops keep falling on my stinkfist” and “Can’t live without a Hooker with a penis”.

I’m honestly not sure what else to write now, not that there’s not more to write just that the last fake song title i wrote is hard to follow. So this is probably the best time for me to zip up as one of us fine gentlemen will be back shortly to update some more… or waffle uncontrollably until his minder returns!

John@TSE

The Experiment is well underway and its fair to say we’re shattered.

I’m going to keep this fairly brief as I feel about ready to….fall asleep. Yes.

We had a great time metting in Belfast: meeting people, organising the shows and acts, and most of all writing the music…

Keep your eyes peeled this week as we start firing up recordings and videos etc of our intensive writing sessions. Intense is the word. But incredibly rewarding. French harmonies attacking glitching beats and then being shoved up against a wall and beaten to death by a midget with a wet slipper. Cheery stuff

Ok…I’ll finish this blog when I’m more awake to report on our activities!

Ruaidhri@TSE